Cooking the books? Or just sloppy journalism?
I don’t wish to be placed in the position of being an apologist for any public official’s misdeeds. On the other hand, sloppy journalism is equally intolerable.
Consider a Tennessee TV news report that slanted its story to make Ronal Serpas look like he was cooking the books on Nashville crime statistics. Fundamentally lacking from that news report was a definition of the differences between two different data collection methods to count crime statistics.
The FBI uses two different systems: Uniform Crime Reporting statistics (UCR), and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) statistics.
The traditional UCR Part I offenses are murder, assault, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, auto theft (an eighth, arson, was added in 1978).
By contrast, the NIBRS Group A offenses number over 40. Therefore, any comparison of UCR statistics to NIBRS statistics is really apples to oranges. To anyone who understands these differences, it’s obvious that the trend lines of total counts may tend to diverge.
To be sure, there are very serious and credible first-hand accounts of the NOPD artificially manipulating crime statistics in the previous administration. We need independent verification of statistical claims made by the NOPD in order to restore credibility, and we should hold Chief Serpas to his commitment to do just that.
But we should also be extremely wary of dramatic news stories by reporters who don’t do their homework, leaning instead on dramatic imagery and strong intonation to give the impression of “serious” investigative journalism.
Here’s a longer analysis I recently sent to a New Orleans reporter:
I just read and watched that Nashville report. I’m more impressed with its savvy “gotcha” approach than I am with the analysis. I think it’s just human nature for anyone, including Serpas, to get defensive when someone’s trying to club you over the head.
I’m sure it’s compelling television journalism to emphasize “other” crime stats, and then show victims describing horrific crimes to give the public a sense of crime out of control. It’s much more difficult and less sexy to actually disaggregate the statistical totals into crime classifications, and do an apples to apples comparison.
It might have been better journalism to ask Serpas to explain the perceived discrepancies, rather than try to snare him in falsehoods. I’m just saying, as one who respects objectivity and the art of the interview, a different approach might have produced a different result — *unless* there was empirical evidence of cooking the books.
As you probably know, the standard FBI Part I UCR offenses are murder, assault, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, auto theft, and arson. How the counts might diverge between the MNPD, TBI, and FBI really requires a closer examination of the counts within each classification as counted by each system — not a comparison of the gross counts. Note that those TBI numbers are higher by tens of thousands of crimes. If TBI uses the NIBRS crime classifications — as opposed to the UCRS — there are over 40 Part A offenses. That alone could dramatically alter the crime trend line.
Sticking to UCR’s, I think most people don’t care as much about larceny relative to murders, stranger assaults, robberies, and rapes, but theft crimes can really jerk the numbers around quite a bit. There can also be fluctuations in people reporting crime — burglaries and rapes tend to be under reported, but that can vary depending on public confidence that professionals will take the time to investigate. Auto thefts not so much because insurance claims require a report.
